BOOK BIRTHDAY for WHERE IT BEGAN!

I’ve been neglecting this blog completely while trying to finish my (long since overdue) WIP and writing guest posts for all of the wonderful YA bloggers who have been so supportive of Where It Began.

But how do you not blog on your book’s birthday?

I don’t actually have anything profound to offer here. I am, in fact, too tired from the writing-round-the-clock, suspension of personal grooming, manic jamboree that is me trying to finish a book, to be able to express anything profound all that cogently.

But I do want to say thank you.

First of all, to the universe. I am so acutely aware that things didn’t have to turn out like this, so glad that everything was lined up to make it possible for me to become a writer, right here, right now, in this particular city and country and family.

To all of the writing fellow travelers who get it, and to the SCBWI where I found so many of them, and to Pubsters, which got me through so much, especially at the beginning, and to YAWriters, and to LAYAS, because even though I don’t think of myself as much of a joiner, joining has meant so much to me. And Verla Kay's Blue Board. And my critique group! (And as long as I’m here, Alexandra Flinn, there hasn’t been one agonized, paranoid book snit that you haven’t been able to talk me down from. Thanks for everything.)

To YA bloggers, who are the most passionate and dedicated and enthusiastic and snarky and sweet lot! And who have inspired some writing I’ve just loved. (Evie Seo, that Everything I Know About True Romance, I learned from Pride & Prejudice thing – never would have done it without you!)

To Alethea Allarey, website genius, blogger extraordinaire, and the most supportive woman on planet earth, and to Alyson Beecher, whose kindness, internet savvy, generosity, and enormous enthusiasm for books and writers knock me out: Wow!

To the extraordinarily helpful and energetic and wonderful people at S&S and Simon Pulse, Paul Crichton and Lydia Finn and Carolyn Swerdloff, and Dawn Ryan. What amazing luck to have the opportunity to work with you! There is a too good to be true aspect of my experience at S&S.

I have thanked my family and early readers and agent and editor in the author’s note and in person to the point that they cover their ears when they see me coming, but as long as we’re doing bookish thanks here, Brenda Bowen is a goddess and Jen Klonsky is pretty much the answer to all writerly prayers.

On Defining One’s Blog (Er, That Would Be My Blog) In Order Not to be Creeped Out by Said Blog

Anyone who's been on my blog in the past few days knows that there was a blog post here about a preorder giveaway I'm doing for Where It Began. Which is no longer here. Which now exists only in a word fine in my laptop. (The blog post, not the contest.)

Only three days on the blog, and the damned thing was creeping me out to such an extent that it just had to go.

All right, there is a certain shameless aspect of blogging; one (that would be me) reveals one’s strange, sick obsessive relationship with goodreads; one gets sappy about how powerful birthdays can be after cancer, which doesn’t have a whole hell of a lot to do with writing but, hey, it was on my mind; one generally exposes unattractive quirks and how and no doubt lapses deep deep into the realm of TMI.

Possibly way TMI.

But despite the fact that, in the realm of TMI, I had a swell time picking out all the stuff for the giveaway, and I’m perfectly happy to have it on a very nice page on my website, complete with attractive photos and funny descriptions, and it makes me kind of happy to tweet about it from time to time (I swear not spammily), just seeing it here in the body of the blog depressed me.
Because the blogging wasn’t supposed to be stealth marketing. (Or in the case of the poor, deleted entry, pretty damned direct marketing.)

I wish I had a really good definition of what the blog is supposed to be, the parameters, the artistic intention, the deeply deeply meaningful semi-literary whatsit in which I plan to wallow here. And perhaps one day I’ll have a sudden impulse to inveigh all blog readers to wear sandwich boards with the cover of Where It Began plastered front and back.

But that day isn’t today.

OCD and Goodreads

Writers with any slight hint of OCD in their make-up should not be on goodreads. Period. They should block it from their computers or, if that doesn’t work, they should somehow rig their computers to make an unpleasant noise and shock their fingertips when they so much as type www.goo…

Not because goodreads might just have some inherent issues (to be discussed some other time, or maybe never, because it sounds a lot like whining) – that is not my issue.

My issue is obsession, flat-out obsession, naked unembellished obsession. And did I say obsession?

There are so many tiny elements to be obsessed with too. How many people plan to read my new book? How many people added it today as opposed to yesterday as opposed to that really great day in November? What is the rating? Why has it gone from 4.11 to 4.10? Yay, it’s 4.14, but wait, now it’s 4.9. Whew, it’s 4.10 again.

The thing is, the numbers are ever-changing, with tiny yet fascinating shifts every few seconds. Especially with a book giveaway. OMG, as we say in YA.

Where It Began has a goodreads book giveaway going.

It started yesterday afternoon. At this moment (wait a second, gotta go check) there are 257 people signed up for it. And how many times have I checked to see how many people have signed up for this giveaway? Hint: It rivals 257.

This is not healthy. This is not a good thing in so many ways. I would make a list of the ways but I have to check goodreads.

And lookee here: it’s 258.

Are there pills for this?

From the Sublime to the, Um, Less Sublime: The Wonderful World of Getting the Word Out

Time was, sitting around writing in spiral notebooks with pilot pens seemed like the coolest work in the world. (Intellectually and artistically satisfying; fulfillment of a childhood dream; a way to explain at-home motherhood that didn’t trigger highly politicized, lip-curling disdain…)

Still does.

But time was, also, that anything even vaguely resembling self-promotion seemed creepily, shamelessly materialistic -- a form of unappetizing bragging, that could cause friends and strangers alike to literally and figuratively unfriend me.

I was wrong.

And here we have the few, incredibly obvious truisms that have finally permeated my consciousness to make shameless promotion somehow less shameful: legitimizing my forays onto twitter, facebook, and my shiny new website; transforming these previously embarrassment-riddled jaunts into necessary activities in support of my writing. As opposed to a hideous time suck.

Or maybe it only takes one. And here it is:

For me, as much as I love sitting around and guiding pilot pens from one end of a spiral notebook to another, the point of writing is saying something to someone.

Someone who has to know that the book is out there, what it’s about, and about my sensibility as a writer. (All right, given twitter, the sensibility of my dog is also on the table. As is my dog. ) Someone who does not, in fact, live next door and whose primary access to information about books involves a computer.

Duh.

And did I mention my pre-sale giveaway?